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David Fruitman, Aug 17, 2015
When asked to contribute to this publication, while honored, I was quite nervous about having been given responsibility to describe developments in one of ASEAN’s last competition law holdouts. While the Royal Government of Cambodia has committed on numerous occasions to meeting its ASEAN commitments in this area and significant resources, efforts, and expertise has been applied, thus far, the development of competition law in Cambodia has not produced the sought after results.
This article will first review the modern history of the development of competition law in Cambodia and outline some of the motivating and guiding influences. While my original brief for this article suggested an extensive description of the current legislation, as there is no enacted competition law or publicly circulated “final” draft, this article will focus on the key features of the last publicly circulated draft legislation. Where possible, the article will also note comments made by government officials in relation to that draft. Unfortunately, from a timing perspective, I was recently informed that the most recent draft will soon be made publicly available, but I suspect this will happen well after the deadline for this article. Finally, the article will look ahead and try to provide some perspective on the potential impact of competition law in Cambodia once implemented.
